"So there is little cause for the fear that our journalism, merely because it is prosperous, is likely to betray us. But it calls for additional effort to avoid even the appearance of the evil of selfishness. In every worthy profession, of course, there will always be a minority who will appeal to the baser instinct. There always have been, and probably always will be some who will feel that their own temporary interest may be furthered by betraying the interest of others. But these are becoming constantly a less numerous and less potential element in the community. Their influence, whatever it may seem at a particular moment, is always ephemeral. They will not long interfere with the progress of the race which is determined to go its own forward and upward way. They may at times somewhat retard and delay its progress, but in the end their opposition will be overcome. They have no permanent effect. They accomplish no permanent result. The race is not traveling in that direction. The power of the spirit always prevails over the power of the flesh. These furnish us no justification for interfering with the freedom of the press, because all freedom, though it may sometime tend toward excesses, bears within it those remedies which will finally effect a cure for its own disorders."
React to this quote
More by Calvin Coolidge
See allResonant Thoughts
"The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather 'What can I and my compatriots do through government' to help us discharge our indi…"
"All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our gr…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"Don't cry over spilled milk. By this time tomorrow, it'll be free yogurt."
— Stephen Colbert"There would be no import duties upon the supplies, machinery, etc., going from the States. The effect that …"
— Ulysses S. Grant"I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I would…"
— Charlotte Eriksson"Even if astrology had been a real science, I knew nothing about it. We find countless events in real histor…"
— Giacomo Casanova"“Not in its statement of God as the All-in-all, taken by itself, but in its consequent denial of the realit…"
— George Holmes Howison"The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free."
— Robert LeFevre